Eisenhower and the Cold War

Author: Robert
Divine

Oxford University
Press, 1981

Here is Divine's summation of Eisenhower as President of the United States:

"The essence of Eisenhower's strength, and the basis for
any claim to presidential greatness, lies in his admirable
self-restraint. Emmet Hughes had this quality in mind when
he wrote: 'The man – and the President – was never more
decisive than when he held to a steely resolve not to
do something that he sincerely believed wrong in itself
or alien to his office.' Nearly all of Eisenhower's foreign
policy achievements were negative in nature. He ended the
Korean War, he refused to intervene militarily in Indochina,
he refrained from involving the United States in the Suez
crisis, he avoided war with China over Quemoy and
Matsu, he resisted the temptation to force a showdown
over Berlin, he stopped exploding nuclear weapons in the
atmosphere. A generation of historians and political scientists,
bred in the progressive tradition, have applied an activist
standard to Ike's negative record and have found it wanting.
Yet in the aftermath of Vietnam, it can be argued that
a President who avoids hasty military actions and refrains
from extensive involvement in the internal affairs of other
nations deserves praise rather than scorn."

Divine describes in detail, but not boring detail,
the major events that occurred during Eisenhower's
administration, including the overthrow of Mossadegh in
Iran, but he does not describe the overthrow of Arbenz
in Guatemala in 1954. Eisenhower comes across as keeping
John Foster Dulles under control and frequently having
to combat Republican Party hot heads. Divine
refers to Eisenhower's memoirs, including Eisenhower's
description of himself as threading his way "with watchfulness
and determination, through narrow and dangerous waters
between appeasement and global war."

Divine describes
some of the oil considerations that molded European and
U.S. foreign policy, and he forgives what he describes
as one of Eisenhower's naive Cold War notions: that he,
Eisenhower, should be able to convince the Russians that
the U.S. means no harm to them and that if they accept
this we could live in peace with them.

Eventually a Soviet leader emerged who was convinced that
the United States really wanted peace. This was Mikail
Gorbachev, after Divine wrote his book.

Divine makes at least two errors.
At one point he confuses Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas
with Senator Ed Johnson of Colorado. And on the same page,
48, he leaves a qualification from one of Senator John
F. Kennedy's statements, distorting slightly the meaning
of the statement. But the great body of Divine's work is lucid
and real.

Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, is portrayed
as a Cold Warrior without Eisenhower's sense of measure.